“I never saw the paper,” says Parmanto. “It’s a breakdown in the process.”

Mahmood Alam, director of publications with Bentham Science Publishers, which runs the journal, said in an email to New Scientist yesterday that staff pretended to accept the paper in order to find out the hoaxers’ identities.

Parmanto says that he first learned of this explanation from Alam yesterday. In his resignation letter, Parmanto says that he suggested that all editorial decisions in future must be taken by scientific editors, rather than Bentham staff.